Fanfiction: Pressure Point, 038 fanfic100
Title: Pressure Point
for the fanfic100 comm
Word Count: 4,682+ (just a little. ;p)
Prompt: 038, "Touch"
Genre: General/ Drama
Rating: PG-13 is good.
Warning: None, just very strong hints
Characters: NejiSasu, cameos of Team Gai
038. Touch
Pressure Point
- this story contains implied yaoi, and if you are uncomfortable with this, please do us both a favor and stay away. The world needs more NejiSasu.
They had moved in circles since the beginning, although there was barely any contact between them both in that regard. Both their families were guilty of idiosyncracies not entirely isolated to a select few in shinobi society, but which were certainly concentrated in their bloodlines. That was the strange way nature had of balancing out the gifted and the talented--by saddling them with ever-decreasing sense of space and the subtle madness that eats away with age.
The Uchiha were characterised by their fiery, short-temperedness, an almost bi-polar shift from the placid warrant officer to an enraged and almost murderous homicide detective (which would later turn out to be the family's biggest irony). The red of the Sharingan was an Uchiha literally seeing blood; but otherwise they were a tough sort, a hardy family well-suited to the position of village police (constituting roughly three-fifths of the force). They never settled for anything less, and were meticulous to the point of being obsessive. Similarly, there were very few cold cases in the hands of an Uchiha investigator.
Sasuke was well used to hearing how his cousins solved boggling crimes, some single-handedly. Respect in his family was earned, by an almost ruthless and unsaid competition between generations, between siblings, between friends. Shisui perfected the katon by age eight; Itachi after him accomplished the same and mastered the Sharingan in a single year. Itachi had murdered his clan; Sasuke after him murdered his brother, and several hundred others besides, in tribute to Manda.
The Hyuuga meanwhile, of Byakugan prowess, experienced the backlash of such omniscient vision; given the opportunity to seek out and intrude upon other's personal spaces with a bit of chakra into their eerie white eyes, they constantly felt theirs infringed upon. Xenophobia manifested in different and varying degrees among members, and none, if any, were spared: Hinata, too perceptive to the hidden gestures of the people around her, shied away from touch; Neji, able to see through the fronts of others, refused to deal with those he believed were far more inferior.
His own family considered him inferior after all. The Hyuuga's calculating and effective sense of management prevented errant family members from accomplishing what Uchiha Itachi had done, but it had bred arrogance and discrimination like a fast-growing disease, which left its ugly mark upon Branch members' foreheads.
It was to be expected then, that the generations-heavy stigma both young men bore in their blood brimmed over upon their contact. The Academy grove looked like a disaster, so much so that Iruka had to steer his students away to a temporary vicinity while kunai were forcibly pulled out of tree-trunks, wedged in firmly up to the ring from a very strong throw. Small craters pockmarked the area like marks of little explosions; nearby shrubbery showed signs of burning, as if singed by a particularly powerful shock of electricity.
The meeting place was a disaster. And so were the young men.
"This is terrible," Shizune declared, secretly cursing her Hokage's ability to intuit and trust in her gut.
Neji had burn marks all over his lower arms, and medium-deep gash wounds along his torso, which blotted the white of his outer tunic like a pattern. Sasuke was hemorrhaging badly, spouting blood every other minute or so as he coughed up violently. Shizune had known the boys' fathers, and in her mind, she prayed their good souls to intercede, because there was hope that perhaps in the afterlife, Hyuuga were more considerate and Uchiha were generous with their help. She had also known the boys' sensei, and secretly wondered if this was the next generation of "Eternal Rivalry".
Sakura swallowed the urge to smash Neji’s face in, when he was delivered to her anesthetized (but still managing to look supremely arrogant nonetheless) if only it weren't for the fact that a Hyuuga served in the medic team on Sasuke's end of the table.
Konoha did not welcome Sasuke back much as it imprisoned him, and Team Gai had been one of the honored teams selected to spearhead the containment. An arrangement that Neji was not very happy with, given his role.
But they both had a strange gravity, in the way that distant and differing bodies of matter ultimately attracted each other, in the way the tomoe in Sasuke's eyes merged to form an entirely different shape; their severe dislike for each other evolved to a mutual curiosity that neither would admit was preoccupying them even as they performed their role of guard and prisoner.
Sasuke saw his guardian as someone to surpass, and his Uchiha blood boiled at the prospect of defeating him; Neji saw his ward as something flawed, but consumed with a passion that seemed so familiar that he could not quite name it, nor shove it away as a Hyuuga did all things.
They did not notice that in the succeeding days, Sasuke slid far too many glances over his shoulder to be simply passed off as casual, and Neji had unconsciously closed the distance between them by a few tolerable feet--tolerable enough for them both, but not to the other eyes that watched them, eyes which had begun to cloud over with questions. They stood far apart to not touch, but certainly near enough to feel the fringes of each other's personal space, crackling and simmering in each their silent rotation.
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He was not on a break. His peculiar assignment did not allow for breaks.
But the Byakugan permitted him to place himself some distance away from Sasuke, as they went about the daily regimen of rehabilitation and re-sealing. He could see Sasuke in the holding field two miles away, where he would be eating casually at a ramen stand, neither one of them complacent enough to believe that distance was separation. In a flash, Neji would be there to halt an attack Sasuke would prepare against one of the jounin administrators.
She found him where she knew she would, enjoying tea outside a small and quiet shop far removed from the main village, along a wooded trail.
"You are certainly confident," she scoffed, balancing her gigantic scroll on the uneven ground, before perching atop it almost casually.
"His status is unremarkable, I do not need to hover about his shoulder like a mother hen." Neji lifted the steaming cup to his lips and took a sip. Indeed, Sasuke was still half-asleep and drugged in his special room in the Left Wing of the Hospital, where he rested after three hours of rehabilitation.
"Ahh, chickens," Tenten teased craftily, her eyes twinkling even as her teammate threw her a quick glare over the rim of the cup. She knew how sensitive Neji was to allusions to birds.
For a brief moment the exchange brought them back several years, back when Team Gai had just been formed. Reminiscing was not the point of the weaponsmaster's abrupt visit, he sensed, so Neji looked at her questioningly.
“You seem to be taking a break yourself.”
Tenten grinned. “It’s difficult, being an understudy of that obsessive-compulsive Shirota-sensei. But, a job done well is a few hours’ break so why not wander and bother the botherable, hmm?”
“Hmmn.” Neji replied, idly swilling his cup.
Tenten’s face sobered up. "His Kusagani apparently responds to certain individuals with some form of seal or mark on them, notwithstanding those whom Orochimaru have marked," she began nonchalantly. She was placed among other weapons experts tasked with researching Sasuke's weapon, the versatile Kusanagi. It was a lesser twin of the blade Orochimaru used for himself. She sucked in a cheek.
"Others who have not been dealt with any high-level seal on them can't lay a hand on it." She lifted her hand to show slightly blackened and skinned tips of fingers obviously exposed to the blade, in the attempt to touch (to claim?) it. The sword rejected that which the weapon did not recognize as its own.
"A hostile weapon. One of the few naturally-occuring ones. The seal that makes it pseudo-sentient is melded right into the very steel itself."
Neji knew enough of weaponry to understand what Tenten meant. "So you'd have to literally destroy the blade to touch it."
"Exactly. We're working on an alternative though. Can't afford to have such a remarkable thing destroyed." She shifted on her seat, quite comfortable with the unusual position. "Its seals are far older than the sword itself, and the thing is ancient. Generations of malevolent use apparently meshed it more tightly with the blade itself."
Even as she spoke with a professional's ease about the subtleties of weaponry, Neji sensed, in the acute and knowing way all Hyuuga had acquired, that even this was not what Tenten had sought him out for. She had business with him that extended far beyond old memories, and even beyond the imperatives of their assignments. He knew his teammate far too well.
Tenten evidently understood him well enough too, for she paused only for a few seconds before she began, "Your mission these days seems less burdensome."
Neji smirked a little at the comment, remembering his first very heated bout with Sasuke. Compared to the violence they kept between them early on, things had become calmer. There had been attempts, surely, because obstinacy and a penchant for vendetta were naturally-occuring in an Uchiha, but he had to admit, these days they both seemed to attain a kind of... truce, a common understanding of each other's role and prowess, a mutual need to--
"You're both quieter now, more contained with each other, is there something the matter? And how is Sasuke-kun? Have you guys been, er, brawling lately?"
But of course there was something the matter, he could feel it moving in his bones like a silent creature of the trees, but he could not see it yet, could not, as it were, pin point what indeed it was that kept him from being outright cold and hatefully detached from his work. That kept him, now that he thought about it, actually interested to understand the way his ward worked. Struck by the sudden impulse to check on Sasuke, Neji turned toward the East, where the hospital was.
Beyond them, beyond the wood, the bed in the Left Wing was now suddenly empty, and Neji cursed himself for the lapse. Tenten noticed the slight veining around the Bykugan and she jumped off her perch, swinging her scroll under her arm in the ready. After a few moments of silence, Neji relaxed his guard, confident once more.
Tenten looked at him pointedly, demanding an answer to her question. He sighed.
"Is it very difficult to understand that perhaps we could be---cordial?" He almost choked on the word.
She snorted, a very exasperated look on her face. In a voice that she could have used to reprimand a younger shinobi, she said, "You both do not work that way. It took months for Lee and myself to at least feel comfortable around you without you imparting a harsh word or two, and it has taken years for Sasuke-kun to come to terms with--"
She cut herself short, and in an instant, Neji understood why Tenten had come. For a small moment, an awkward silence fell between them. Something moved about in the woods but only Neji saw it, only Neji kept his eye fixed on it as it moved silently between the leafy canopy.
"She sent you, didn't she?" he asked in a low voice.
Tenten sighed resignedly. "Even until now Sasuke-kun is hostile to the very people who care for him. She--Sakura..."
He raised an irritated eyebrow. "And she sent you as messenger, as a mouthpiece to--"
"Do you think that she can even talk this freely to Sasuke-kun and expect a reply?!"
Her sharp retort jolted him a little, as he never quite realized this angle. Tenten was glaring at him now, her brown eyes glittering like knives that might as well have solidified in her hand. She opened her mouth as if to say something, and shook her head.
Without another word, she turned to walk away. Before she rounded the side of the teashop, she stopped.
"There are conditions to touching hostile seal-weapons, Neji-kun."
She was looking at him pointedly now, and the expression in her face told Neji that Tenten knew what it was that he himself could not bring to name, the uncertainty that had lately become a staple in his relationship with Uchiha Sasuke.
"Unless these conditions are met, not just anyone can handle them. Maybe the terms were not Sakura-chan's to fulfill. Just..."
Her face relaxed to a weary half-smile, the familiar vexed expression she wore after she had to put up with one of his and Lee’s petty disagreements, "just don’t be overconfident about things.”
With a nod, Tenten leapt off from the ground and disappeared in a clap of smoke.
And there it was again, the evasive sensation of some overwhelming connection, there it was swimming beneath Tenten's cryptic words. Surely she had meant more than weaponry in that final remark.
And why was Sakura so very concerned about it all? She surely had more clout than he did in terms of talking to the Hokage, and she should know, of all people, that he would not actually kill the Uchiha out of petty spite.
But what spite?
Something dropped down on quiet feet not too far away from where he sat, musing. Walking through the bushes, Uchiha Sasuke looked upon his snacking guard with the challenging glare of a constantly irritated animal. Neji was not the least bit perturbed.
"And where is your mission, guard?" Sasuke asked mockingly, titling his head in a way that would have been a very familiar gesture of an Uchiha captain sizing up a detainee or throwing back a question to a pressured witness. An accusatory glare, and a proud one, at the reversal of the situation: an Uchiha, now the prisoner, comes looking for the guard.
"Where I can see it from here," Neji replied coldly, gazing back with blank placid eyes emanating a characteristic arrogance that almost came naturally to the Hyuuga, stemming from the strength of the family doujutsu trait. No matter where you are, I can see you, and thus still have a modicum of control over you.
Sasuke apparently took the hint because he pursed his lips angrily and scowled, and Neji could feel the familiar angry chakra steaming off Sasuke's person. Today, he predicted, would have to have at least one full bout of sparring, because Sasuke had to fight for a point. The last comment was too austere to be put aside.
“You were gone for quite some time, longer than the usual.” Neji placidly slid his payment across the small counter, and made to move away. As if encountering a potentially harmful creature, or as if attempting to bolt, Sasuke jerked, his whole body tense.
“Your thick-eyebrow friend got a little carried away in the calisthenics,” sneered Sasuke, and Neji could only imagine how Rock Lee would have indeed delivered a punishing session to Sasuke, with or without the constraint of the rest of the therapy team.
“And it had to be an excuse like that, Uchiha.” Neji now turned to fully regard Sasuke, impossibly blank eyes at level with Sasuke’s dark and angry ones.
Just as Neji detected a very quick movement of Sasuke’s feet, and readied himself for the defensive, Sasuke keeled over with a pained groan.
The fool was still in his hospital clothes of course, and the crisp coolness of the morning must have bitten deep into the tender places where the constraining seals were cauterized into his body. Sasuke must also have moved to use a huge amount of chakra at that moment, thereby activating the seals and cutting off the flow immediately.
Neji now stood over him, scrutinizing him with eyes cast down. The Hyuuga pride bubbled up in that one overbearing gaze. Sasuke, similarly, looked up with spinning red eyes (the constraints allowed the Uchiha to utilize the Sharingan, Neji noted), as if daring the Hyuuga to come any closer. Tension wafted in the silent air between them, thick, palpable and familiar.
Sasuke looked like he was right about to either dart away or lunge at Neji, clearly resisting without words. On the other side of the small tea booth, a thin crowd had gathered, curious, anticipating, faces guarded and inquisitive.
“Are you quite done, Uchiha?”
The solid calm of his voice surprised even him, as he had clearly meant for it to come out derisively. Sasuke grunted, a last show of defiance before visibly relaxing himself a little; a bristly animal calming down. He struggled to his feet, and Neji wondered why he had to fight back the urge to extend a hand.
They both walked without incident down a back street, which led to the retreat house where Sasuke was made to live. Tenten’s words came back with a strange prophetic ring as he observed the almost companionable silence that accompanied them.
“Your Kusanagi is quite stubborn,” he said out loud.
Sasuke made no response, except to haughtily look away and sniff disdainfully.
“It is giving the research team a difficult time.”
“Perhaps if I were to wield it again, I could give you all a show of how it truly works,” he snapped malevolently, a sardonic grin curling his mouth.
“Unnecessary,” Neji retorted icily, “in your condition you will look a bigger fool.”
Condition. There are conditions to be met.
He noticed that Sasuke was still limping slightly from what was no doubt an arresting surge of pain that had coursed through his already sensitized nerves (he had come from therapy after all) earlier. A closer observation showed the swollen places where the seals were branded. They turned bluish, irritated by the chill.
Sasuke obviously escaped the holding room in a great hurry. These Uchiha were never placated, and never really stopped trying even if it was useless. But hadn’t Sasuke come to where he was resting, talking with Tenten--?
“You should have stayed longer,” Neji muttered. “Your seals look like they’re eating your skin raw.” There was what could have been an embarrassing falter of indifference in the last few words, but Neji kept his stony front.
Irritated eyes shot his way, but he chose to calmly look ahead. This was an interrogation, but as to who was revealing the answers, Neji did not quite know. It left him unsettled and uneasy.
“They’re fine,” came the gritted reply, and for a moment Neji thought he would have to duck a punch. But Sasuke kept to himself, petulant but strangely obedient, even as Neji steered them both away from the main roads, where, by then, villagers were starting to throng.
He did not even wince when Neji grabbed his arm roughly, as he stumbled on the way up the incline of a small hill. The therapy team had done him in today, the Hyuuga observed, frowning as he assessed the bruise-ringed seals on his companion’s skin. Rock Lee must have been especially vengeful, though for what occasion, he could not quite name. It did not help that Sasuke was a difficult patient.
Tenten’s slightly accusatory eyes never left Neji, even while he stretched himself in preparation for a round of morning sparring. It bothered him to think that perhaps his teammate knew more than he did, and that she knew something she would rather he found out for himself.
I hope she isn’t hiding any information about how the Uchiha can channel his Chidori, he thought to himself. While Sasuke could not successfully create a damaging Chidori (or any of its variants which he had invented for himself), he knew how to work around garnering enough of his lightning-based chakra to emulate a Nagashi version. This, so far, was what repelled Neji’s swift jabs. It lightly diffused the pinprick-accurate chakra from Neji’s fingers, buying a little more sparring time.
Despite handicaps, the Uchiha were also a clever sort.
On the other side of the small clearing, the barefoot Sasuke was ready. Neji kicked off his sandals, tapped several places on his arm and torso (and made sure Sasuke saw it) to regulate his chakra usage, and readied himself. As always, it was a mere intake of breath before they came into hard contact.
When they fought, it was always an eerily quiet, burningly intense bout. None of the battle cries that Lee liked to spout when he was particularly fired up; none of the threats and gloating that Naruto yelled when he took the defensive. Just the solid thud of fists connecting to bone, the soft grunt that accompanied a winded feint, the whistle of a kick just inches away from an unprotected cheek.
The seals prohibited a large amount of chakra from being expelled, but it allowed the function of the Sharingan’s basic attributes. Sasuke glared at him now, several feet away, anticipating his every move, and mostly succeeding. Neji, for his part, anticipated Sasuke’s attacks on the level of muscular movement and chakra flow. The cool white of the Byakugan stared back openly, and they circled each other warily.
A flicker of blue chakra was warning enough to Neji, as Sasuke practically flew from where he stood, to deliver a roundkick to Neji’s face. The jarring jolt that coursed through his defensive arm was the side-effect of the Chidori Nagashi that Sasuke always, always seemed to try to work around.
But even as Neji grit his teeth against the sudden rush of electricity, Sasuke before him winced as well. Trying a Nagashi when he was fresh out of the therapy room was a mistake that Sasuke paid with raw and hurting nerves. Using this short lapse to his advantage, Neji planted a foot to the ground, sidestepped in an arc, and using the momentum, pinned Sasuke from behind while a hand coolly clasped the scruff of his neck.
He must have squeezed the spinal nerves too hard without meaning to, or it must have been the premature attempt at Nagashi, but Sasuke suddenly lurched backward on knees that seemed to too-readily to give way. He fell back heavily against Neji, who nearly stepped backwards in surprise.
“Check,” Neji murmured, not without a bit of breath, their safe word to stop their bouts. Sasuke managed a pained grunt in reply, but his dark eyes flashed angrily.
“You should have stayed longer,” Neji said more firmly, as he helped to right a weak-kneed Sasuke up, supporting the latter as he half-hobbled, half-walked to the house.
He thought of having a word with Lee and the therapy team when he had the chance. He understood all too well the need to punish this arrogant, this self-contained Uchiha, but perhaps there was a thin line between repercussion, and overdoing it. Perhaps there was a thin line between duty and personal matters.
He had Sasuke’s arm over his shoulder, with his right hand supporting the weakened Uchiha’s back. They made it to Sasuke’s room, where Neji displayed uncharacteristic gentleness in lowering Sasuke down to the fuuton.
He was half on his stomach, and every inch of him was knotted in pain. Neji could see that if the Uchiha only relaxed, the whiplash of this morning’s exercise would probably hurt a considerable amount less. But it couldn’t be helped, and even the most practiced and the most seasoned of nin had muscles and bones that ached when stretched to their utmost limits.
Sasuke was snarling and muttering under his breath.
There are conditions to touching hostile weapons, Neji-kun.
He really only had to reach out, that was all. Even Sasuke seemed to be unconsciously expecting it, judged by his overt lack of violence upon contact. In fact it could even be said that perhaps Sasuke welcomed it--if welcoming could be interpreted in the almost-purr that came with the mild complaint as a particularly stiff shoulder was massaged into place, or in the lazy loll of the head as fingers smoothed a back still tingling from remnants of lightning-based chakra.
There was nothing to be said between them. Neji knew where to press, and his fingers carried a reassuring weight that released bloodflow in the tightly-balled muscles. None of the ferocity his usual light taps incurred; in return, none of the scathing counter-comments that Sasuke honed to fine perfection.
Just silence, Sasuuke’s even breathing, and something that he could pinpoint as contentment buzzing in the still air between them. No, it wasn’t chakra of any sort; trace concentrations of electricity in Sasuke’s body had long since scattered onto the different avenues of his body.
It wasn’t until Sasuke was perfectly still beneath him that Neji realised he’d fallen asleep. He blinked and sat back, quite unsure about what to do next. He hadn’t expected, certainly, to do something of the sort to Sasuke of all people--for all intents and purposes, he had just massaged the Uchiha to a fitful sleep of children.
Now it never really occurred to Neji to do anything of that nature, and he carried his bewilderment with him outside. Sparring with Sasuke didn’t seem to require any second thought; where that was concerned, they both seemed readily willing to beat the daylights out of each other in an effort to prove--
--to prove what? Surely it was more than the petty need to see which family, which house, which doujutsu, which jounin-mentor, which no.1 Rookie between them won out in the end. To prove that what they stood for meant more than what the other believed in? Or was it just an attempt to cover up for something else?
Very slowly, Neji swung his arm in a half-arc, a slow-motion killing stroke that he had used many times to end a nasty bout. It would be so that the loosely-crooked fingers would end up just below the ear of the person one was facing, soundly snapping the jawbone so that the neck fell back against the curve of the arm.
Delivered swiftly, it was fatal. Done slowly and with the deliberate ease of a lover, it was almost like a move to embrace.
Severely taken aback by his realisation, Neji immediately dropped the stance, shook his head as if to clear it, and proceeded to ready himself for meditation. Anytime now, Lee and Tenten would make their way up to the hill, to be with him during their respective lunch breaks.
He crossed his legs, and opened his palms upward as a gesture of emptiness; emptiness that would never come, as long as he still felt the body beneath his fingers, emptiness that would not be his as long as there were terms to meet and a hostile human weapon desperately wanting to be tamed.
Author’s Notes:
Firstly may I just say I am SO glad I have this story done and over with. I’ve started this a long time ago, but barely could continue on a thread for long because I’d sense it would be long-winded. I guess several bored days recuperating from an illness at the hospital did the trick! :D
[1] My little pet theories on the Kusanagi and the Kusanagi’s seals. I’ll be mentioning more of Tenten of course, later.
[2] It would make sense that Team Gai would pursue their own “specific” fields of study individually, and then come together as a team to pool their expertise.
[3] Concept here was touch and how it could simultaneously be something negative (killing, as with the Hyuuga), or something positive (the very same pressure-point techniques used for lulling a prisoner to sleep).
[4] This is for the great folks at geniuslove who continue to make great and spectacular NejiSasu. Keep on trucking, guys.
Link to my little Damn Table (tm) XD: here
Sorry for the great delay, I just got discharged from the hospital. This is to prove that fanfiction is a good killer of boredom, IV tubes be damned. XD
for the fanfic100 comm
Word Count: 4,682+ (just a little. ;p)
Prompt: 038, "Touch"
Genre: General/ Drama
Rating: PG-13 is good.
Warning: None, just very strong hints
Characters: NejiSasu, cameos of Team Gai
038. Touch
Pressure Point
- this story contains implied yaoi, and if you are uncomfortable with this, please do us both a favor and stay away. The world needs more NejiSasu.
They had moved in circles since the beginning, although there was barely any contact between them both in that regard. Both their families were guilty of idiosyncracies not entirely isolated to a select few in shinobi society, but which were certainly concentrated in their bloodlines. That was the strange way nature had of balancing out the gifted and the talented--by saddling them with ever-decreasing sense of space and the subtle madness that eats away with age.
The Uchiha were characterised by their fiery, short-temperedness, an almost bi-polar shift from the placid warrant officer to an enraged and almost murderous homicide detective (which would later turn out to be the family's biggest irony). The red of the Sharingan was an Uchiha literally seeing blood; but otherwise they were a tough sort, a hardy family well-suited to the position of village police (constituting roughly three-fifths of the force). They never settled for anything less, and were meticulous to the point of being obsessive. Similarly, there were very few cold cases in the hands of an Uchiha investigator.
Sasuke was well used to hearing how his cousins solved boggling crimes, some single-handedly. Respect in his family was earned, by an almost ruthless and unsaid competition between generations, between siblings, between friends. Shisui perfected the katon by age eight; Itachi after him accomplished the same and mastered the Sharingan in a single year. Itachi had murdered his clan; Sasuke after him murdered his brother, and several hundred others besides, in tribute to Manda.
The Hyuuga meanwhile, of Byakugan prowess, experienced the backlash of such omniscient vision; given the opportunity to seek out and intrude upon other's personal spaces with a bit of chakra into their eerie white eyes, they constantly felt theirs infringed upon. Xenophobia manifested in different and varying degrees among members, and none, if any, were spared: Hinata, too perceptive to the hidden gestures of the people around her, shied away from touch; Neji, able to see through the fronts of others, refused to deal with those he believed were far more inferior.
His own family considered him inferior after all. The Hyuuga's calculating and effective sense of management prevented errant family members from accomplishing what Uchiha Itachi had done, but it had bred arrogance and discrimination like a fast-growing disease, which left its ugly mark upon Branch members' foreheads.
It was to be expected then, that the generations-heavy stigma both young men bore in their blood brimmed over upon their contact. The Academy grove looked like a disaster, so much so that Iruka had to steer his students away to a temporary vicinity while kunai were forcibly pulled out of tree-trunks, wedged in firmly up to the ring from a very strong throw. Small craters pockmarked the area like marks of little explosions; nearby shrubbery showed signs of burning, as if singed by a particularly powerful shock of electricity.
The meeting place was a disaster. And so were the young men.
"This is terrible," Shizune declared, secretly cursing her Hokage's ability to intuit and trust in her gut.
Neji had burn marks all over his lower arms, and medium-deep gash wounds along his torso, which blotted the white of his outer tunic like a pattern. Sasuke was hemorrhaging badly, spouting blood every other minute or so as he coughed up violently. Shizune had known the boys' fathers, and in her mind, she prayed their good souls to intercede, because there was hope that perhaps in the afterlife, Hyuuga were more considerate and Uchiha were generous with their help. She had also known the boys' sensei, and secretly wondered if this was the next generation of "Eternal Rivalry".
Sakura swallowed the urge to smash Neji’s face in, when he was delivered to her anesthetized (but still managing to look supremely arrogant nonetheless) if only it weren't for the fact that a Hyuuga served in the medic team on Sasuke's end of the table.
Konoha did not welcome Sasuke back much as it imprisoned him, and Team Gai had been one of the honored teams selected to spearhead the containment. An arrangement that Neji was not very happy with, given his role.
But they both had a strange gravity, in the way that distant and differing bodies of matter ultimately attracted each other, in the way the tomoe in Sasuke's eyes merged to form an entirely different shape; their severe dislike for each other evolved to a mutual curiosity that neither would admit was preoccupying them even as they performed their role of guard and prisoner.
Sasuke saw his guardian as someone to surpass, and his Uchiha blood boiled at the prospect of defeating him; Neji saw his ward as something flawed, but consumed with a passion that seemed so familiar that he could not quite name it, nor shove it away as a Hyuuga did all things.
They did not notice that in the succeeding days, Sasuke slid far too many glances over his shoulder to be simply passed off as casual, and Neji had unconsciously closed the distance between them by a few tolerable feet--tolerable enough for them both, but not to the other eyes that watched them, eyes which had begun to cloud over with questions. They stood far apart to not touch, but certainly near enough to feel the fringes of each other's personal space, crackling and simmering in each their silent rotation.
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He was not on a break. His peculiar assignment did not allow for breaks.
But the Byakugan permitted him to place himself some distance away from Sasuke, as they went about the daily regimen of rehabilitation and re-sealing. He could see Sasuke in the holding field two miles away, where he would be eating casually at a ramen stand, neither one of them complacent enough to believe that distance was separation. In a flash, Neji would be there to halt an attack Sasuke would prepare against one of the jounin administrators.
She found him where she knew she would, enjoying tea outside a small and quiet shop far removed from the main village, along a wooded trail.
"You are certainly confident," she scoffed, balancing her gigantic scroll on the uneven ground, before perching atop it almost casually.
"His status is unremarkable, I do not need to hover about his shoulder like a mother hen." Neji lifted the steaming cup to his lips and took a sip. Indeed, Sasuke was still half-asleep and drugged in his special room in the Left Wing of the Hospital, where he rested after three hours of rehabilitation.
"Ahh, chickens," Tenten teased craftily, her eyes twinkling even as her teammate threw her a quick glare over the rim of the cup. She knew how sensitive Neji was to allusions to birds.
For a brief moment the exchange brought them back several years, back when Team Gai had just been formed. Reminiscing was not the point of the weaponsmaster's abrupt visit, he sensed, so Neji looked at her questioningly.
“You seem to be taking a break yourself.”
Tenten grinned. “It’s difficult, being an understudy of that obsessive-compulsive Shirota-sensei. But, a job done well is a few hours’ break so why not wander and bother the botherable, hmm?”
“Hmmn.” Neji replied, idly swilling his cup.
Tenten’s face sobered up. "His Kusagani apparently responds to certain individuals with some form of seal or mark on them, notwithstanding those whom Orochimaru have marked," she began nonchalantly. She was placed among other weapons experts tasked with researching Sasuke's weapon, the versatile Kusanagi. It was a lesser twin of the blade Orochimaru used for himself. She sucked in a cheek.
"Others who have not been dealt with any high-level seal on them can't lay a hand on it." She lifted her hand to show slightly blackened and skinned tips of fingers obviously exposed to the blade, in the attempt to touch (to claim?) it. The sword rejected that which the weapon did not recognize as its own.
"A hostile weapon. One of the few naturally-occuring ones. The seal that makes it pseudo-sentient is melded right into the very steel itself."
Neji knew enough of weaponry to understand what Tenten meant. "So you'd have to literally destroy the blade to touch it."
"Exactly. We're working on an alternative though. Can't afford to have such a remarkable thing destroyed." She shifted on her seat, quite comfortable with the unusual position. "Its seals are far older than the sword itself, and the thing is ancient. Generations of malevolent use apparently meshed it more tightly with the blade itself."
Even as she spoke with a professional's ease about the subtleties of weaponry, Neji sensed, in the acute and knowing way all Hyuuga had acquired, that even this was not what Tenten had sought him out for. She had business with him that extended far beyond old memories, and even beyond the imperatives of their assignments. He knew his teammate far too well.
Tenten evidently understood him well enough too, for she paused only for a few seconds before she began, "Your mission these days seems less burdensome."
Neji smirked a little at the comment, remembering his first very heated bout with Sasuke. Compared to the violence they kept between them early on, things had become calmer. There had been attempts, surely, because obstinacy and a penchant for vendetta were naturally-occuring in an Uchiha, but he had to admit, these days they both seemed to attain a kind of... truce, a common understanding of each other's role and prowess, a mutual need to--
"You're both quieter now, more contained with each other, is there something the matter? And how is Sasuke-kun? Have you guys been, er, brawling lately?"
But of course there was something the matter, he could feel it moving in his bones like a silent creature of the trees, but he could not see it yet, could not, as it were, pin point what indeed it was that kept him from being outright cold and hatefully detached from his work. That kept him, now that he thought about it, actually interested to understand the way his ward worked. Struck by the sudden impulse to check on Sasuke, Neji turned toward the East, where the hospital was.
Beyond them, beyond the wood, the bed in the Left Wing was now suddenly empty, and Neji cursed himself for the lapse. Tenten noticed the slight veining around the Bykugan and she jumped off her perch, swinging her scroll under her arm in the ready. After a few moments of silence, Neji relaxed his guard, confident once more.
Tenten looked at him pointedly, demanding an answer to her question. He sighed.
"Is it very difficult to understand that perhaps we could be---cordial?" He almost choked on the word.
She snorted, a very exasperated look on her face. In a voice that she could have used to reprimand a younger shinobi, she said, "You both do not work that way. It took months for Lee and myself to at least feel comfortable around you without you imparting a harsh word or two, and it has taken years for Sasuke-kun to come to terms with--"
She cut herself short, and in an instant, Neji understood why Tenten had come. For a small moment, an awkward silence fell between them. Something moved about in the woods but only Neji saw it, only Neji kept his eye fixed on it as it moved silently between the leafy canopy.
"She sent you, didn't she?" he asked in a low voice.
Tenten sighed resignedly. "Even until now Sasuke-kun is hostile to the very people who care for him. She--Sakura..."
He raised an irritated eyebrow. "And she sent you as messenger, as a mouthpiece to--"
"Do you think that she can even talk this freely to Sasuke-kun and expect a reply?!"
Her sharp retort jolted him a little, as he never quite realized this angle. Tenten was glaring at him now, her brown eyes glittering like knives that might as well have solidified in her hand. She opened her mouth as if to say something, and shook her head.
Without another word, she turned to walk away. Before she rounded the side of the teashop, she stopped.
"There are conditions to touching hostile seal-weapons, Neji-kun."
She was looking at him pointedly now, and the expression in her face told Neji that Tenten knew what it was that he himself could not bring to name, the uncertainty that had lately become a staple in his relationship with Uchiha Sasuke.
"Unless these conditions are met, not just anyone can handle them. Maybe the terms were not Sakura-chan's to fulfill. Just..."
Her face relaxed to a weary half-smile, the familiar vexed expression she wore after she had to put up with one of his and Lee’s petty disagreements, "just don’t be overconfident about things.”
With a nod, Tenten leapt off from the ground and disappeared in a clap of smoke.
And there it was again, the evasive sensation of some overwhelming connection, there it was swimming beneath Tenten's cryptic words. Surely she had meant more than weaponry in that final remark.
And why was Sakura so very concerned about it all? She surely had more clout than he did in terms of talking to the Hokage, and she should know, of all people, that he would not actually kill the Uchiha out of petty spite.
But what spite?
Something dropped down on quiet feet not too far away from where he sat, musing. Walking through the bushes, Uchiha Sasuke looked upon his snacking guard with the challenging glare of a constantly irritated animal. Neji was not the least bit perturbed.
"And where is your mission, guard?" Sasuke asked mockingly, titling his head in a way that would have been a very familiar gesture of an Uchiha captain sizing up a detainee or throwing back a question to a pressured witness. An accusatory glare, and a proud one, at the reversal of the situation: an Uchiha, now the prisoner, comes looking for the guard.
"Where I can see it from here," Neji replied coldly, gazing back with blank placid eyes emanating a characteristic arrogance that almost came naturally to the Hyuuga, stemming from the strength of the family doujutsu trait. No matter where you are, I can see you, and thus still have a modicum of control over you.
Sasuke apparently took the hint because he pursed his lips angrily and scowled, and Neji could feel the familiar angry chakra steaming off Sasuke's person. Today, he predicted, would have to have at least one full bout of sparring, because Sasuke had to fight for a point. The last comment was too austere to be put aside.
“You were gone for quite some time, longer than the usual.” Neji placidly slid his payment across the small counter, and made to move away. As if encountering a potentially harmful creature, or as if attempting to bolt, Sasuke jerked, his whole body tense.
“Your thick-eyebrow friend got a little carried away in the calisthenics,” sneered Sasuke, and Neji could only imagine how Rock Lee would have indeed delivered a punishing session to Sasuke, with or without the constraint of the rest of the therapy team.
“And it had to be an excuse like that, Uchiha.” Neji now turned to fully regard Sasuke, impossibly blank eyes at level with Sasuke’s dark and angry ones.
Just as Neji detected a very quick movement of Sasuke’s feet, and readied himself for the defensive, Sasuke keeled over with a pained groan.
The fool was still in his hospital clothes of course, and the crisp coolness of the morning must have bitten deep into the tender places where the constraining seals were cauterized into his body. Sasuke must also have moved to use a huge amount of chakra at that moment, thereby activating the seals and cutting off the flow immediately.
Neji now stood over him, scrutinizing him with eyes cast down. The Hyuuga pride bubbled up in that one overbearing gaze. Sasuke, similarly, looked up with spinning red eyes (the constraints allowed the Uchiha to utilize the Sharingan, Neji noted), as if daring the Hyuuga to come any closer. Tension wafted in the silent air between them, thick, palpable and familiar.
Sasuke looked like he was right about to either dart away or lunge at Neji, clearly resisting without words. On the other side of the small tea booth, a thin crowd had gathered, curious, anticipating, faces guarded and inquisitive.
“Are you quite done, Uchiha?”
The solid calm of his voice surprised even him, as he had clearly meant for it to come out derisively. Sasuke grunted, a last show of defiance before visibly relaxing himself a little; a bristly animal calming down. He struggled to his feet, and Neji wondered why he had to fight back the urge to extend a hand.
They both walked without incident down a back street, which led to the retreat house where Sasuke was made to live. Tenten’s words came back with a strange prophetic ring as he observed the almost companionable silence that accompanied them.
“Your Kusanagi is quite stubborn,” he said out loud.
Sasuke made no response, except to haughtily look away and sniff disdainfully.
“It is giving the research team a difficult time.”
“Perhaps if I were to wield it again, I could give you all a show of how it truly works,” he snapped malevolently, a sardonic grin curling his mouth.
“Unnecessary,” Neji retorted icily, “in your condition you will look a bigger fool.”
Condition. There are conditions to be met.
He noticed that Sasuke was still limping slightly from what was no doubt an arresting surge of pain that had coursed through his already sensitized nerves (he had come from therapy after all) earlier. A closer observation showed the swollen places where the seals were branded. They turned bluish, irritated by the chill.
Sasuke obviously escaped the holding room in a great hurry. These Uchiha were never placated, and never really stopped trying even if it was useless. But hadn’t Sasuke come to where he was resting, talking with Tenten--?
“You should have stayed longer,” Neji muttered. “Your seals look like they’re eating your skin raw.” There was what could have been an embarrassing falter of indifference in the last few words, but Neji kept his stony front.
Irritated eyes shot his way, but he chose to calmly look ahead. This was an interrogation, but as to who was revealing the answers, Neji did not quite know. It left him unsettled and uneasy.
“They’re fine,” came the gritted reply, and for a moment Neji thought he would have to duck a punch. But Sasuke kept to himself, petulant but strangely obedient, even as Neji steered them both away from the main roads, where, by then, villagers were starting to throng.
He did not even wince when Neji grabbed his arm roughly, as he stumbled on the way up the incline of a small hill. The therapy team had done him in today, the Hyuuga observed, frowning as he assessed the bruise-ringed seals on his companion’s skin. Rock Lee must have been especially vengeful, though for what occasion, he could not quite name. It did not help that Sasuke was a difficult patient.
Tenten’s slightly accusatory eyes never left Neji, even while he stretched himself in preparation for a round of morning sparring. It bothered him to think that perhaps his teammate knew more than he did, and that she knew something she would rather he found out for himself.
I hope she isn’t hiding any information about how the Uchiha can channel his Chidori, he thought to himself. While Sasuke could not successfully create a damaging Chidori (or any of its variants which he had invented for himself), he knew how to work around garnering enough of his lightning-based chakra to emulate a Nagashi version. This, so far, was what repelled Neji’s swift jabs. It lightly diffused the pinprick-accurate chakra from Neji’s fingers, buying a little more sparring time.
Despite handicaps, the Uchiha were also a clever sort.
On the other side of the small clearing, the barefoot Sasuke was ready. Neji kicked off his sandals, tapped several places on his arm and torso (and made sure Sasuke saw it) to regulate his chakra usage, and readied himself. As always, it was a mere intake of breath before they came into hard contact.
When they fought, it was always an eerily quiet, burningly intense bout. None of the battle cries that Lee liked to spout when he was particularly fired up; none of the threats and gloating that Naruto yelled when he took the defensive. Just the solid thud of fists connecting to bone, the soft grunt that accompanied a winded feint, the whistle of a kick just inches away from an unprotected cheek.
The seals prohibited a large amount of chakra from being expelled, but it allowed the function of the Sharingan’s basic attributes. Sasuke glared at him now, several feet away, anticipating his every move, and mostly succeeding. Neji, for his part, anticipated Sasuke’s attacks on the level of muscular movement and chakra flow. The cool white of the Byakugan stared back openly, and they circled each other warily.
A flicker of blue chakra was warning enough to Neji, as Sasuke practically flew from where he stood, to deliver a roundkick to Neji’s face. The jarring jolt that coursed through his defensive arm was the side-effect of the Chidori Nagashi that Sasuke always, always seemed to try to work around.
But even as Neji grit his teeth against the sudden rush of electricity, Sasuke before him winced as well. Trying a Nagashi when he was fresh out of the therapy room was a mistake that Sasuke paid with raw and hurting nerves. Using this short lapse to his advantage, Neji planted a foot to the ground, sidestepped in an arc, and using the momentum, pinned Sasuke from behind while a hand coolly clasped the scruff of his neck.
He must have squeezed the spinal nerves too hard without meaning to, or it must have been the premature attempt at Nagashi, but Sasuke suddenly lurched backward on knees that seemed to too-readily to give way. He fell back heavily against Neji, who nearly stepped backwards in surprise.
“Check,” Neji murmured, not without a bit of breath, their safe word to stop their bouts. Sasuke managed a pained grunt in reply, but his dark eyes flashed angrily.
“You should have stayed longer,” Neji said more firmly, as he helped to right a weak-kneed Sasuke up, supporting the latter as he half-hobbled, half-walked to the house.
He thought of having a word with Lee and the therapy team when he had the chance. He understood all too well the need to punish this arrogant, this self-contained Uchiha, but perhaps there was a thin line between repercussion, and overdoing it. Perhaps there was a thin line between duty and personal matters.
He had Sasuke’s arm over his shoulder, with his right hand supporting the weakened Uchiha’s back. They made it to Sasuke’s room, where Neji displayed uncharacteristic gentleness in lowering Sasuke down to the fuuton.
He was half on his stomach, and every inch of him was knotted in pain. Neji could see that if the Uchiha only relaxed, the whiplash of this morning’s exercise would probably hurt a considerable amount less. But it couldn’t be helped, and even the most practiced and the most seasoned of nin had muscles and bones that ached when stretched to their utmost limits.
Sasuke was snarling and muttering under his breath.
There are conditions to touching hostile weapons, Neji-kun.
He really only had to reach out, that was all. Even Sasuke seemed to be unconsciously expecting it, judged by his overt lack of violence upon contact. In fact it could even be said that perhaps Sasuke welcomed it--if welcoming could be interpreted in the almost-purr that came with the mild complaint as a particularly stiff shoulder was massaged into place, or in the lazy loll of the head as fingers smoothed a back still tingling from remnants of lightning-based chakra.
There was nothing to be said between them. Neji knew where to press, and his fingers carried a reassuring weight that released bloodflow in the tightly-balled muscles. None of the ferocity his usual light taps incurred; in return, none of the scathing counter-comments that Sasuke honed to fine perfection.
Just silence, Sasuuke’s even breathing, and something that he could pinpoint as contentment buzzing in the still air between them. No, it wasn’t chakra of any sort; trace concentrations of electricity in Sasuke’s body had long since scattered onto the different avenues of his body.
It wasn’t until Sasuke was perfectly still beneath him that Neji realised he’d fallen asleep. He blinked and sat back, quite unsure about what to do next. He hadn’t expected, certainly, to do something of the sort to Sasuke of all people--for all intents and purposes, he had just massaged the Uchiha to a fitful sleep of children.
Now it never really occurred to Neji to do anything of that nature, and he carried his bewilderment with him outside. Sparring with Sasuke didn’t seem to require any second thought; where that was concerned, they both seemed readily willing to beat the daylights out of each other in an effort to prove--
--to prove what? Surely it was more than the petty need to see which family, which house, which doujutsu, which jounin-mentor, which no.1 Rookie between them won out in the end. To prove that what they stood for meant more than what the other believed in? Or was it just an attempt to cover up for something else?
Very slowly, Neji swung his arm in a half-arc, a slow-motion killing stroke that he had used many times to end a nasty bout. It would be so that the loosely-crooked fingers would end up just below the ear of the person one was facing, soundly snapping the jawbone so that the neck fell back against the curve of the arm.
Delivered swiftly, it was fatal. Done slowly and with the deliberate ease of a lover, it was almost like a move to embrace.
Severely taken aback by his realisation, Neji immediately dropped the stance, shook his head as if to clear it, and proceeded to ready himself for meditation. Anytime now, Lee and Tenten would make their way up to the hill, to be with him during their respective lunch breaks.
He crossed his legs, and opened his palms upward as a gesture of emptiness; emptiness that would never come, as long as he still felt the body beneath his fingers, emptiness that would not be his as long as there were terms to meet and a hostile human weapon desperately wanting to be tamed.
Author’s Notes:
Firstly may I just say I am SO glad I have this story done and over with. I’ve started this a long time ago, but barely could continue on a thread for long because I’d sense it would be long-winded. I guess several bored days recuperating from an illness at the hospital did the trick! :D
[1] My little pet theories on the Kusanagi and the Kusanagi’s seals. I’ll be mentioning more of Tenten of course, later.
[2] It would make sense that Team Gai would pursue their own “specific” fields of study individually, and then come together as a team to pool their expertise.
[3] Concept here was touch and how it could simultaneously be something negative (killing, as with the Hyuuga), or something positive (the very same pressure-point techniques used for lulling a prisoner to sleep).
[4] This is for the great folks at geniuslove who continue to make great and spectacular NejiSasu. Keep on trucking, guys.
Link to my little Damn Table (tm) XD: here
Sorry for the great delay, I just got discharged from the hospital. This is to prove that fanfiction is a good killer of boredom, IV tubes be damned. XD